Burundi's first post-transition president elected

Burundi's Parliament has elected ex-Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza to be the strife-torn nation's first post-transitional president in one of the final steps of a peace process aimed at ending a bloody 12-year civil war.

Mr Nkurunziza, leader of the former Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) guerrilla army, was the lone candidate in the legislative vote after his party swept elections in June and July and potential rivals opted not to run.

He was elected to a five-year term in the first round of ballot casting by a vote of 151 to nine with one abstention and one spoiled ballot, an AFP correspondent said.

His election and inauguration next week at the top of a new power-sharing government will mark one of the last stages in a four-year-old peace process intended to end the current conflict in which some 300,000 people have been killed.

The 40-year-old born-again Christian and one-time sports educator who fled into the jungle to join Burundi's civil war between majority Hutus and Tutsis, offered effusive thanks to God for his election.

"What has just occurred here shows clearly that if you put God first place, you will never be disappointed," he said.

"I thank the members of parliament, those who voted for me and those who didn't."

Mr Nkurunziza also thanked the international community for supporting the peace process, his family and members of the FDD who chose him as their leader in 2001 and under his direction laid down their arms two years later.

"I thank all the FDD activists who advised me, helped me and raised me," he said.

"I am like an ant on an elephant who gains from all the elephant does."